On the analysis of reputation for agent-based web services

Maintaining sound reputation requires robust control and investigation. In this paper, we analyze a reputation mechanism that objectively maintains accurate reputation evaluation of selfish agent-based web services. In the proposed framework, web services are ranked using their reputation as a result of provided feedback reflecting consumers’ satisfaction. However, selfish web services may alter their public reputation level by managing to get fake feedback. We investigate the payoffs of different scenarios by focusing on the issues that discourage web services to act maliciously. We also analyze the details of the proposed mechanism by discussing simulation and empirical results that fully depict the system parameters and show the feasibility of the proposed approach.     

网络信息检索中相关反馈技术的Java实现

介绍了相关反馈技术的基本思想,设计了网络信息检索中相关反馈系统的功能与结构,探索如何在现有的公共网络搜索引擎基础上,利用Java语言实现具有相关反馈功能的搜索引擎接口.     

The power of a nod and a glance: Envelope vs. emotional feedback in animated conversational agents

In this article we describe results froman experiment of user interaction with autonomous , human - like ( humanoid ) conversational agents . We hypothesize that for embodied conversational agents , nonverbal behaviors related to the process of conversation , what we call envelope feedback, is much more important than other feedback , such as emotional expression . We test this hypothesis by having subjects interact with three autonomous agents , all capable of full - duplex multimodal interaction: able to generate and recognize speech , intonation , facial displays , and gesture . Each agent , however , gave a different kind of feedback: ( 1 ) content - related only , ( 2 ) content + envelope feedback , and ( 3 ) content + emotional . Content-related feedback includes answering questions and executing commands; envelope feedback includes behaviors such as gaze , manual beat gesture , and head movements; emotional feedback includes smiles and looks of puzzlement . Subjects' evaluations of the systemwere collected with a questionnaire , and videotapes of their speech patterns and behaviors were scored according to how often the users repeated themselves , how often they hesitated , and how often they got frustrated . The results confirmour hypothesis that envelope feedback is more important in interaction than emotional feedback and that envelope feedback plays a crucial role in supporting the process of dialog . A secondary result fromthis study shows that users give our multimodal conversational humanoids very high ratings of lifelikeness and fluidity of interaction when the agents are capable of giving such feedback .     

基于网络爬虫和微信的高校信息服务平台研究

针对传统高校网站信息分散不便于智能终端访问的问题，提出将网络爬虫技术和微信公众号开发技术相结合开发高校信息服务平台，利用网络爬虫技术对分散的网站信息进行自动采集清洗归整，并使用微信公众平台向高校师生即时推送。实验表明，该平台与传统的信息获取方式相比，运行效率更高，用户的服务体验更好。     

Assisting Visually Impaired People to Acquire Targets on a Large Wall-Mounted Display

Large displays have become ubiquitous in our everyday lives, but these displays are designed for sighted people.This paper addresses the need for visually impaired people to access targets on large wall-mounted displays. We developed an assistive interface which exploits mid-air gesture input and haptic feedback, and examined its potential for pointing and steering tasks in human computer interaction（HCI）. In two experiments, blind and blindfolded users performed target acquisition tasks using mid-air gestures and two different kinds of feedback（i.e., haptic feedback and audio feedback）. Our results show that participants perform faster in Fitts＇ law pointing tasks using the haptic feedback interface rather than the audio feedback interface. Furthermore, a regression analysis between movement time（MT） and the index of difficulty（ID）demonstrates that the Fitts＇ law model and the steering law model are both effective for the evaluation of assistive interfaces for the blind. Our work and findings will serve as an initial step to assist visually impaired people to easily access required information on large public displays using haptic interfaces.     

The contribution of virtual reality to research on sensory feedback in remote control

Here we consider research on the kinds of sensory information most effective as feedback during remote control of machines, and the role of virtual reality and telepresence in that research. We argue that full automation is a distant goal and that remote control deserves continued attention and improvement. Visual feedback to controllers has developed in various ways but autostereoscopic displays have yet to be proven. Haptic force feedback, in both real and virtual settings, has been demonstrated to offer much to the remote control environment and has led to a greater understanding of the kinesthetic and cutaneous components of haptics, and their role in multimodal processes, such as sensory capture and integration. We suggest that many displays using primarily visual feedback would benefit from the addition of haptic information but that much is yet to be learned about optimizing such displays.     

基于Google云计算的Web应用与开发

云计算作为一种以互联网为中心的新兴计算技术,将会越来越多地推动Web服务模式的变革和发展.针对云计算应用技术问题,在讨论Google云计算服务体系架构、实现机制和算法流程的基础上,以Google App Engine开发平台为例,给出了如何利用集成环境设计、部署一个Web应用服务,并通过一个web应用服务实例,提出了G...     

240 Hz OLED technology properties that can enable improved image quality

Large screen Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) technology is finally emerging as a technology ready for consumer use. OLED has a number of areas in which it can in principle be better than Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs); two ways in particular are that OLED technology can achieve black levels that are much darker than LCDs, and the OLED pixels can switch extremely rapidly. These differences can permit OLED displays to outperform LCD under a number of conventional scenarios, but it can also enable some dramatically improved stereoscopic 3D (s3D) displays, including full‐resolution temporal multiplexing with more than two views. In this paper, we review a set of experiments evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of OLED technology in general with a particular emphasis on understanding how the strengths of OLED technology can be leveraged to maximize the performance of an s3D display system.     

From interaction to performance with public displays

Interacting with public displays involves more than what happens between individuals and the system; it also concerns how people experience others around and through those displays. In this paper, we use “performance” as an analytical lens for understanding experiences with a public display called rhythIMs and explore how displays shift social interaction through their mediation. By performance, we refer to a situation in which people are on display and orient themselves toward an audience that may be co-located, imagined, or virtual. To understand interaction with public displays, we use two related notions of collectives—audiences and groups—to highlight the ways in which people orient to each other through public displays. Drawing examples from rhythIMs, a public display that shows patterns of instant messaging and physical presence, we demonstrate that there can be multiple, heterogeneous audiences and show how people experience these different types of collectives in various ways. By taking a performance perspective, we are able to understand how audiences that were not physically co-present with participants still influenced participants’ interpretations and interactions with rhythIMs. This extension of the traditional notion of audience illuminates the roles audiences can play in a performance.     

Name disambiguation in scientific cooperation network by exploiting user feedback

Name disambiguation is a very critical problem in scientific cooperation network. Ambiguous author names may occur due to the existence of multiple authors with the same name. Despite much research work has been conducted, the problem is still not resolved and becomes even more serious. In this paper, we focus ourselves on such problem. A method of exploiting user feedback for name disambiguation in scientific cooperation network is proposed, which can make use of user feedback to enhance the performance. Furthermore, to make the user feedback more effective, we divide user feedback into three types and assign different weights to them. To evaluate the effectiveness of our proposed method, experiments are conducted with standard public collections. We compare the performance of our proposal with baseline methods. Results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the previous methods without introducing user interactions. Besides, we investigate into how different types of user feedback can affect the disambiguation results.     

The impact of e-feedback on the revisions of L2 writers in an academic writing course

This study explored the relationship between electronic feedback (e-feedback) and its impact on second-language (L2) writers’ revisions specifically focusing on how L2 students responded to their peers and what kinds of revisions they made as a result of the feedback they received. The 20 L2 writers wrote, responded, and revised on a database-driven web site specifically designed for writing and responding. Other forms of feedback they received included oral feedback from friends and peers and from face-to-face meetings with university writing center tutors. Results suggest students preferred oral feedback. However, e-feedback had a greater impact on revision than oral feedback, implying that e-feedback might be more useful. Additionally, e-feedback helped L2 writers focus on larger writing blocks. Thus, L2 writers may use e-feedback to create macro revisions. This exploratory study highlights a new form of revising and responding and offers insights into joining oral response to online collaboration.     

Bringing white-box testing to Service Oriented Architectures through a Service Oriented Approach

The attractive feature of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is that pieces of software conceived and developed by independent organizations can be dynamically composed to provide richer functionality. The same reasons that enable flexible compositions, however, also prevent the application of some traditional testing approaches, making SOA validation challenging and costly. Web services usually expose just an interface, enough to invoke them and develop some general (black-box) tests, but insufficient for a tester to develop an adequate understanding of the integration quality between the application and the independent web services. To address this lack we propose an approach that makes web services more transparent to testers through the addition of an intermediary service that provides coverage information. The approach, named Service Oriented Coverage Testing (SOCT), provides testers with feedback about how much a service is exercised by their tests without revealing the service internals. In SOCT, testing feedback is offered itself as a service, thus preserving SOA founding principles of loose coupling and implementation neutrality. In this paper we motivate and define the SOCT approach, and implement an instance of it. We also perform a study to asses SOCT feasibility and provide a preliminary evaluation of its viability and value.     

A longitudinal study of emoticon use in text messaging from smartphones

Our goal in the present study was to understand how emoticons are used in text messaging and, in particular, how genders differed in the frequency and variety of emoticons used via this medium. Previous research has found small and sundry differences in emotive expression online suggesting that technology has closed the gender gap. However, the data collected in these studies were public. In this study, we collected real portions of private communications data from individuals’ smartphones over a 6-month period. SMS messages, in general, were not used very much overall, with only 4% of all messages containing at least one emoticon. Still, differences between genders manifested in the amount and variety of emoticons used. Females sent more messages with emoticons; however, surprisingly, males used a more diverse range of emoticons.     

MEMS-based tactile displays

This paper discusses state-of-the-art tactile displays fabricated by a micro-electronic-mechanical-system (MEMS). A tactile display conveys tactile sensations to users by using actuators. Traditional tactile displays consist of large size actuators, such as a motor or an ultrasound vibrator, to convey tactile feedback by vibration. In addition, the tactile sensation of traditional displays has poor resolution. Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology, which is a miniature fabrication process, enables etching, sputtering and assembling of miniature structures. Recently, the technology was applied to tactile displays. For example, shape memory alloy (SMA) actuators are widely used in tactile displays to convey roughness or vibration. The actuators are fabricated by a sputtering process and then thinned. The displays convey various tactile sensations, including feedback and tactile sensations of objects such as paper or wood. This paper is a review of tactile displays fabricated by MEMS technology. We also describe the fabrication processes and stimulation methods to present the potential and applications of the displays.     

Perceptions of web knowledge and usability: When sex and experience matter

Web users are now a mixture of consumer and web designer. As such, the context within which we are socialized about the web – as both male and female users – moderates the relationship between what we think we know about it and its usability to complete tasks. With online survey data from 2077 web users, we empirically examine the relationship between user perceptions of web knowledge (our confidence in what we think we know) and user beliefs about usability of the web (how easy and useful we believe it to be). We include a user’s sex and their website design experience as important moderators on this relationship. Results show a positive relationship between perceived web knowledge and web usability, and under the context of website design experience, more value is placed on the utility of the web, rather than on its ease of use. This moderation effect is stronger for female than it is for male web users. In summary, users with more confidence in their knowledge are more oriented towards the utility of the web than how easy it is to harvest that utility. Our work contributes to an understanding of the influence of the usage context within which the knowledge and beliefs of male and female users are socialized about web technology.     

Assisting people with visual impairments in aiming at a target on a large wall-mounted display

Large interactive displays have become ubiquitous in our everyday lives, but these displays are designed for the needs of sighted people. In this paper, we specifically address assisting people with visual impairments to aim at a target on a large wall-mounted display. We introduce a novel haptic device, which explores the use of vibrotactile feedback in blind user search strategies on a large wall-mounted display. Using mid-air gestures aided by vibrotactile feedback, we compared three target-aiming techniques: Random (baseline) and two novel techniques – Cruciform and Radial. The results of our two experiments show that visually impaired participants can find a target significantly faster with the Cruciform and Radial techniques than with the Random technique. In addition, they can retrieve information on a large display about twice as fast by augmenting speech feedback with haptic feedback in using the Radial technique. Although a large number of studies have been done on assistive interfaces for people who have visual impairments, very few studies have been done on large vertical display applications for them. In a broader sense, this work will be a stepping-stone for further research on interactive large public display technologies for users who are visually impaired.     

Designing an extensible architecture for Personalized Ambient Information

Ambient displays provide us with information in the background of our awareness. However, as each user has individual wishes and needs of how, which and when information is presented, the acceptance of ambient displays is low.In this paper we introduce an extensible architecture for personalized ambient information.We employ a notification system to extend the capability of a fixture to display more than one variable. Multiple variables can be updated by multiple information providers. Thereby, our architecture covers a broader spectrum of notifications from alarms to ambient information.We evaluate our concept within a dual-task experiment in comparison to preset notifications. The results show a level of self-interruption which is significantly lower than using preset notifications. Therefore our approach outperforms preset notifications and moves ambient displays closer to secondary displays in human–computer interaction.     

Personalising web page presentation for older people

This paper looks at different ways of personalising web page presentation to alleviate functional impairments in older people. The paper considers how impairments may be addressed by web design and through various personalisation instruments: accessibility features of standard browsers, proxy servers, assistive technology, application adaptors, and special purpose browsers. A pilot study of five older web users indicated that the most favoured personalisation technique was overriding the CSS (cascading style sheet) with a readily available one using a standard browser. The least favoured one was using assistive technology. In a follow-up study with 16 older web users, performing goal-directed browsing tasks, overriding CSS remains the most favoured. Assistive technology remains the least favoured and the slowest. Based on user comments, one-take-home message for web personalisation instrument developer is that the best instrument for older persons is one that most faithfully preserves the original layout while requiring the least effort.     

Quantum dot materials for improved autostereoscopic color filter display designs

In previous publications, we investigated and discussed wavelength selective autostereoscopic 3D arrangements, consisting of common LCD and RGB‐color filter barriers. We determined computed advantages of wavelength selective barriers compared with conventional barriers like lenticular and parallax barriers. An experimental demonstration showed no satisfactory results using commercial displays. The broad band wavelength spectra of backlights and filter technology resulted in high crosstalk and undesirable moiré effects. Nowadays, LCDs with quantum dot materials have come into the market and compete with OLED by improved color depth and High Dynamic Range. In this paper, we describe how to improve the characteristics of autostereoscopic displays by using quantum dot materials and show the benefits of this technology in combination with novel color filter designs.